Heating air is a really bad use of electricity. Nissan (and GM?) figured out that if you heat the seats and the steering wheel, people feel warm enought that you don't have to heat the whole cabin. I don't know what temp they were working at, so not sure how well that would play in northern MI, but the heated seats in my D2 were awesome in MI winters. May just have to heat the air only a little (say, to 45C vs 70C)
At least with cooling you can use a compressor (a small HP(electricity) drag) and/or remove humidity to make it feel cooler (again, in AZ it may not work out well).
Yeah, those DII seats will light your ass on fire. In general, however, the one thing you'll always get tons of inside of a DII is heat. It's always coming through the vents one way or another, and the tunnel get very hot. I think my blender is getting stuck, though, which is really killing the airflow at this point.
Honestly, I'd be happy with three knobs; but overall the controls in the DII are very easy to operate, if slow to adjust. The air conditioner just plain sucks, though. It also sucks on my Infiniti, my Jaguar, its non-existent on my Impala, smells like hell in the dog-shit Dakota... Whatever I get next will have a very good climate control system.
I also suffer motion sickness now, which is tempered by cold air being blown in my face under greater than Land Rover pressure.
I'm considering replacing the entire climate control system in the DII, panel and all, with an aftermarket unit meant for big American classics. That's a big can of worms, but maybe if I yank it all it'll be easy enough. I've sweat my balls off in too many deserts in clunky old junkers to want to deal with that here.
Many years ago, I got used to yanking the duct from behind the HMMWV dash and shoving it up my flack jacket. Once I figured
that out, I've been addicted to hot airflow, as well.
Cheers,
Kennith